In the setting of love in order, the true imagination (our capacity to intuit the real) is all-important. Leanne Payne, The Healing Presence.* Imagination fascinates me. The prophetic imagination especially. In fact, I’ve just finished a chapter on Brueggemann’s prophetic imagination for inclusion in a 2021 book on practical theology, and that same prophetic-imaginative construct … Continue reading
In the way of tears, we become prayer; we no longer labour under the illusion of prayer as technology… We do not pray; we are prayed. Maggie Ross, The Fountain and the Furnace: The Way of Tears and Fire. The tears poured down my face yesterday. Cycling for hours. Albeit with an unexpected break at lunchtime. … Continue reading
What if the only way to go deeper is the way I don’t want to go? The way that I have resisted year upon year. An edge along which I’ve danced but which I’ve never gone over. Never over that edge. I have been the good girl. The one who doesn’t lose control. Whose make … Continue reading
The words back up. Piling, one upon the other. Stacking and toppling, until they are out of order, meaning tangled. Still I keep my mouth closed. For how do I know that these words are yours and not mine? These words which burn in my bones, taste like acid in my mouth. Prophet or cynic? Speaker … Continue reading
Brueggemann talks about the prophetic imagination in some powerful ways. For him, it is about an alternative consciousness with two lofty aims. First, it quietly seeks to dismantle the dominant consciousness. Then it hopes to energise the community of faith by promises of what will be. I see this in my own leadership and living. That I … Continue reading
He’d learned from the troubler of Israel. He’d learned to hear the God of Elijah and he’d learned the power of the Name. But now the man of God was gone. He’d seen the whirlwind take him. Just as he had hoped, he’d seen it with his own eyes. And now what he had asked was lying … Continue reading
Subversive is not a word which figures often in my vocabulary. Chloe is the quiet one, the one who prefers the way of peace and generally opts for compliance. Though some of you think me unafraid to say it like it is, I hold back. More than you’d know. I find a way to silence my own … Continue reading
As I contemplate the trajectory of culture, my heart feels heavy. I don’t know whether that should ever be the case, given the God whom we serve, but I feel weighed down by the sheer size of the task. Our vision at LifeGiving to become an outward-reaching community of disciples is perhaps more counter-cultural than … Continue reading
The Art of Steering 